Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government is Using Your Tax Dollars to Silence Your Voice
$127M was spent just studying and countering Covid-related speech.
OpenTheBooks
Nov 22, 2024
https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/taxpayer-funded-censorship-how-government
Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has spent $267 million on research grants with the term “misinformation” in the proposal.
Of course, the Covid pandemic was the driving force behind so much of the misinformation debate. Sure enough, the feds have spent at least $127 million in grants specifically targeted to study the spread of “misinformation” -- or to help people “overcome” it, so to speak -- by persuading them to go along with Covid-related public health recommendations and mandates.
The federal government used both carrots and sticks, in the form of grants and censorious pressure campaigns, in the name of combating COVID misinformation. At the same time, it was working hand in glove with social media companies to silence critics of repressive COVID-19 policies.
In February the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a scathing report against the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding grants supporting tools and processes that censor online speech.
Federal spending records show at least $127 million tax dollars funding anti-misinformation efforts directly related to COVID-19 for a variety of activities, from on-the-ground advocacy working to dispel vaccine misinformation, to scientific studies on how supposed misinformation is spread online.
Taxpayer money in California used to pay PR firms millions for COVID outreach, celebrity influencers
By Lucas Manfredi FOXBusiness
November 12, 2020
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/los-angeles-county-millions-taxpayer-funding-pr-covid-influencers
Los Angeles County's Board of Supervisors, Department of Public Health and Department of Health Services have renewed contracts with two public relations firms for the second time after spending millions in taxpayer funding since March to have them craft and guide a Coronavirus Response Media campaign, despite the county having its own fully-staffed communications team.
According to documents obtained by FOX 11's Bill Melugin, Fraser Communications and Mercury Public Affairs were originally awarded separate, no-bid contracts of $200,000 on March 12 and 30 respectively. Fraser was hired to draft press releases and talking points, monitor public perception of COVID-19 and the county's reponse to it, and develop and implement an advertising campaign via local outlets and social media on key messages and best practices, among other duties.
As for Mercury, the firm was tasked with creating a “Multicultural and Ethnic Outreach and Communications” plan in order to reach diverse audiences in LA County, part of which includes “recruiting and deploying non-County messengers, celebrity influencers, and other surrogates" to help with messaging on social media.
The contracts show that LA County had applied for the cost to be reimbursed via federal or state disaster aid money.